Sometimes the world just gets you down
And times are rather tough
You’re feeling kind of out of place
Your mind is filled with fluff
You’re at a loss for what to do
You don’t know where to go
So you do what just comes naturally
And grab a cup o’ joe

When morning finds you far too soon
And gives your face a slap
It’s clear you haven’t slept enough
You really feel like crap
When all you really want to do is crawl back into bed
Or perhaps just try to kill the bastards drumming in your head

So you…
Grab a cup of java
That magic in a mug
Some caffeinated goodness
To chug and chug and chug
Without it you can’t function
Your brain gets stuck in park
No matter what you try to do
You just can’t find your spark

When I say I know just how you feel
I’m sure you know it’s true
’cause anyone who knows me
Knows that I’m an addict too
I love the way it tastes
And how it perks me up
If you want to make me happy
Just fetch your biggest cup

Of…
Caffeinated goodness
Oh how I love it so
A cuppa cappuccino
To make my body go
Perhaps some macchiato
Or latté on the run
It doesn’t make much difference
As long as I get one

My pregnancy with the Little One wasn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination. Once we managed to get past the genetic issues (though until he was actually born and shown to be defect-free, my suspicions never fully abated), I was hit with a number of other problems. There was never any escaping from the fact that my pregnancy was high-risk. All of my prenatal testing was performed by top specialists at Hadassah Hospital, under the careful management of my geneticist, and once my gestational diabetes was diagnosed, I switched from my regular gynecologist to a high-risk gynecologist, who agreed to take me on despite the fact that at the time, she wasn’t taking on new cases. From the 16th week, I found myself working from home, on doctor’s orders

Somehow, we made it to the 39th week, and giving birth proved to be even more fraught with danger than the pregnancy itself, as I lost a tremendous amount of blood and ended up receiving four units each of blood and plasma. At one point, I actually turned white due to the rapid loss of blood, and my husband and I were both convinced that he was going to end up a single parent. There was an anesthesiologist on call, in the event that they might have to rush me into surgery to remove my uterus, and once we got past the crisis several hours later, they gave me an oxygen mask because my oxygen saturation levels were low. In total, I spent more than 26 hours in the delivery room, even though I gave birth just after the 14th hour passed.

While I certainly would never have chosen this path for my pregnancy, I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that I learned a lot during those nine months.

In a nutshell, here are ten things I learned during the course of my high-risk pregnancy, in random order:

Being fed long strands of spaghetti while lying flat in a hospital bed after surgery is a really bad idea, even if the person feeding you has steady hands.

Cerclage is just a fancy French word for “we’re going to take a needle and thread and sew your incompetent cervix shut”.

The cerclage is put in under general anesthesia. Anesthesia is not used when the cerclage is removed.

It’s easy to stay on the gestational diabetes diet after hearing about another woman with GD giving birth to a 5 kg baby. At the beginning of the ninth month. The Little One weighed 2.9 kg, and I gained less than 8 kg during the pregnancy.

Sushi is not allowed. Caviar, on the other hand, is perfectly acceptable.

Having the option to work from home just because you can is great. Being forced to work from home because you have no other option is not so great.

The pediatric cardiologist who performed our fetal echocardiogram can also let you know the baby’s gender, especially when it’s umm, rather pronounced. The first thing I said to my husband once we were back in the car was, “so, we learned two things today. One is that our son’s heart is okay, and two is that he’s got a big willy…”

Being high-risk means never having to ask, “how much will the test cost,” because you get them all for free.

Oh dear, the twins were at it again. Those bratty, preteen girls (potentially the most dangerous and merciless of all living creatures, of course), standing less than 50 feet away, whispering to their bratty little friends, simultaneously casting furtive glances in my direction, smiling, laughing, and continuing to whisper. This little activity had been going on sporadically over the years, and I’d begun to wonder if they’d finally outgrown such childish behavior. Clearly, they hadn’t.

“What were they laughing at,” I mused. What could there possibly be wrong with me in such an outstanding way as to provide fodder for preteen gossip for such a long time? I was curious, but more than anything, I was annoyed. Stupid little children playing games, I know, but still. The rudeness, the arrogance they displayed infuriated me far more than not knowing what it was that they were saying. Call me pathetic, but I wanted revenge. I wanted to embarrass them. I wanted to humiliate them. I wanted them to know who they were dealing with, and I wanted them to regret tangling with me in the first place.

I confided in a friend, who surmised that my feelings were the result of having been teased in school when I was young, and advised me to ignore them. I reckoned she was right, and that I should probably consider acting like an adult. And I did consider it. For about three-and-a-half minutes. And rejected it. Children they may be, but I decided that in this case, that’s no excuse. Such blatant rudeness (not to mention disrespect for, gulp, “elders”) shouldn’t be allowed to pass quietly, and frankly, my patience for these little antics ran out long ago.

I’ve pondered a number of scenarios for dealing with this pesky little problem. The girls are downstairs neighbors who dote on the Little One and make small talk with the husband, so the plan must be cunning enough to somehow teach them a lesson, while at the same time not making me look like the bad guy. Giving dirty looks had little to no effect, so clearly, we must turn things up a notch. Telling their parents? I’m not sure. A bit traditional, and I’d feel as though I was running to the principal to tattle on the school bully. I’ve thought about singling them out in front of everyone in the vicinity and smilingly asking them what they’re whispering about, and if it’s something they’d like to share with everyone. I’ve considered playing on the insecurities of their friends by pointing out that if this is how the girls treat me when I’m standing right in front of them, I could only imagine what they might be saying about their friends behind their backs – they may or may not believe it, but the seeds of uncertainty will have been sown. I’ve mulled over the possibility of pointing it out to other neighbors as it happens, catching them in the act and embarrassing them. And, evil mother that I am, I’m thinking about telling the Little One (out loud and in English) the next time they call him over that I’d prefer he not hang around with them, since they’re not very nice to his mommy, and then sending him over (hopefully in front of their mother) so that he can innocently ask them why they aren’t nice to his mother. And of course, I could always take the high road and continue to ignore, but it wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying as public humiliation and fighting fire with fire.

I’ve fallen into freelance writing in much the same way that I fell into technical writing. While the writing itself comes easily, I sometimes rely on my more experienced writer friends for information about various technical aspects of freelancing, especially the all-important query/pitch. Today’s question was addressed to Lisa, who gets an A+ for creativity, if not clarity. I have to be honest – I’m still not sure I know what her answer is…

Liza: Do you remember that story about my friend’s sister? My friend asked if I could write up a piece in English about her sister’s case and related issues. I contacted another friend who works for a certain publication, and she said I’d have to pitch it to the editor. Any tips or suggestions that you can offer would definitely be appreciated.

Lisa: Keep the pitch short and pithy. Three paragraphs, with three lines each, should do it:

First para – outline the story. Example: On June 2, 1984, the naked body of a well-known socialite was found in Central Park, just 3 minutes’ walk from her Fifth Avenue residence. Twenty-four years later, a man whose DNA matches that of blood found at the crime scene was discovered in Boston, Massachusetts. It soon emerged that he was a popular professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and that his blood sample accidentally turned up in a crime lab after he allowed one of his students to practice drawing blood by using his arm.

Second para – sketch background. Yasmine Levy, a half-Chinese, half-Jewish teenager whose father made his money with a chain of Glatt Kosher Szechuan Chinese restaurants, was a model student who had recently been accepted to Juilliard. She was her parents’ only child. Her violent death shocked Manhattan, but despite massive publicity no-one was ever arrested for her murder.

Third – closing platitudes: number of words you’d like to write, when you’d like to submit it, looking forward to her response, etc.

Liza: You’ve got quite an imagination…

I think the professor was actually the socialite, and she faked her own death because she knew that her family would never accept the fact that she’d always felt like a man trapped in a woman’s body or the fact she wanted to help people in a meaningful way by teaching medicine (following a stint at a desolate medical clinic in Southeast Africa), and would therefore never be able to lead the life that she truly wanted to live.

As for Yasmine, she was murdered by a hitman, after a contract was taken out on her life by her father’s biggest rival, half-Jewish, half-Chinese businessman Shao Ling Goldfarb, because he believed that Yasmine’s father had stolen his secret recipe for shmaltz fried rice…